


beloved

by watfordbird33



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: London, M/M, One Shot, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-30 01:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20805884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Barrow has never been a brave man. He thinks Richard Ellis could teach him how to be one.





	beloved

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the movie last night, and I still haven't recovered. Here's what the inside of my head looks like now.

He goes to London. He doesn’t tell anyone besides Mrs. Hughes that he’s going, but the whole servants’ hall ends up at the back door anyway. They’re a cheerful bunch, all together, and when they think he’s not looking they nudge each other and cough studiously into their hands.

Mrs. Hughes wishes him well with uncharacteristic timidity, and then goes up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. It surprises him so much that for a moment he can only clear his throat and blink at her, until Carson pushes forward with a gruff, _“Well,_ then, Mr. Barrow,” and Barrow recovers his wits. He gives Carson a cool smile and a cooler handshake; the old butler will be assuming Barrow’s position for the next few days, and he clearly couldn’t be more thrilled to have another chance to squeeze into his livery. 

Besides Carson, it’s only Daisy who doesn’t get it, and maybe that’s just because she’s hanging all over Andy’s arm. She pats Barrow’s wrist and trills her goodbye so distractedly that it’s clear she has no idea what he’s really off to do. Officially, of course, there’s a doctor in London—a specialist. Mrs. Hughes didn’t ask Barrow what he specializes in, and he didn’t feel the need to enlighten her.

“I trust you’ll take good care of Downton while I’m gone, Mr. Carson,” Barrow tells Carson, and Carson gives him a look that says he’d rather die than be instructed on the upkeep of a house that is rightfully his.

On the train, when Barrow stands to stretch his legs, he can feel three things in his pocket. One is Ellis’s token; the second is his latest letter. The third is a figurine Barrow found in the village last week. It’s meant to be a children’s toy—a rough wooden carving of a dog—but there’s something whimsical and fierce about it that Barrow found irresistible. He’s already practiced the way he’ll slip it seamlessly into Ellis’s hand. 

He presses his face to the windowpane to watch London reel itself in along the tracks. The gesture is decidedly undignified, but he can’t help it. There’s no one to see the compulsive clench of his hand in his pocket, or to frown at the smudge his nose leaves on the glass.

The room he’s booked is hardly big enough for him and his suitcase. He empties his pockets onto the nightstand, takes off his shoes and his traveling suit, and lies down on the lumpy cot. When he flips onto his side, hot with the novelty of a London room to himself, the lamplight glints weirdly off the silver flat of Ellis’s token. He reaches out and closes his hand over it.

“Mr. Barrow?”

Someone’s knocking at the door. He rises hurriedly, tucking the token under the pillow.

“There’s tea in the parlor until five.”

It’s almost reassuring to be subject once again to the brisk, strident tones of a housekeeper sure of her place. Barrow stands for a moment, listening to the clop-clop of the woman’s heels as she marches away from his door. On to the next room, he’s sure, and the next, and the next after that. 

He decides not to go down to tea. 

In his first letter to Ellis, he was cautious and fumbling and as blatant as a schoolboy. Nothing he could be arrested for, but it was enough to make Ellis show up in the village three weeks later, his rangy frame glaringly out of place among the slumped, shabby townspeople. He bought Barrow a whiskey at the pub and warned him to be cautious, and then he pushed Barrow up against the outside wall of the pub and kissed his mouth. 

_Is this your idea of being cautious? _Barrow asked him.

_They watch the mail, _Ellis said. He put his hand up to Barrow’s jaw and touched the stubble there. _I’ve already been asked about you._

_What did you say?_

_I told them that you were jealous of my innate talent for service, and that I had decided to indulge you with an informal correspondence._

_You would, wouldn’t you._

Ellis grinned. He said, _They believed me, too._

It’s eleven-o’clock when Barrow wakes, shaking and dry-mouthed and half-falling from the narrow bed. He gropes for the light. The window’s been jammed shut, but he gets his letter-opener under the sash and throws it open, so that the city air streams in. Outside, there are still men and women hurrying across the cobblestones. He sits on the edge of the bed to watch them, propping his elbows on the windowsill and pressing the fingers of his bad hand into the palm of his good one.

He dreams of the trenches. He writes of them, too, and once Ellis wrote back and said sometimes he counts his own fingers to stop remembering. So Barrow counts. Three, five, eight, ten. One, five, seven, ten. He used to hold George Crawley’s hands the same way, tapping his pudgy fingertips and skipping numbers until the little boy laughed and rolled away.

“Beloved,” Barrow says, out loud, and it’s the start of a letter. Then he feels ridiculous, and so he puts down the window and climbs back into bed. The city swells with a great and gradual light. 

He should have written a letter, of course, and begun it with _Beloved, _and dropped it in the mail without a thought for propriety. But Barrow has never been a brave man. Instead he leaves the inn and wanders through the streets of London. He walks all day. At noon, he buys bread and meat from a butcher near the palace, and then he returns to the inn for tea. The maiden aunts sit and flirt with him. It’s their chattering persistence, finally, that sends him back out into the streets. He pulls his hat low down over his eyes and goes to see the festival that fills the next street over—if only to have a story to tell in the servants’ hall.

At the festival, there are fools and nobles and a cacophony of music, and in spite of everything, Barrow finds himself smiling as he wanders from stall to stall. He buys a length of ribbon for Mrs. Hughes, then two more lengths for Anna and Mrs. Patmore. There’s even a pocket-watch that he can imagine Carson compulsively winding. He has to draw the line somewhere, though, and he draws it short of spending his money on _Carson._

But the music and the free-flowing ale lift his spirits even further, and soon he’s swaying a little, jammed close against the other merrymakers. There’s something inevitable in the air. Downton is so far away, and Ellis with his soft eyes is so near, and here is Thomas Barrow—an unencumbered city man, as full and glad and alive as he’s ever been. 

And so he’s not surprised when a familiar silhouette slides in beside him. After all, the whole day has been unfurling boldly toward this meeting. Because the ale has not robbed him completely of his common sense, Barrow puts his chin up and stares straight ahead. But he can feel himself smiling, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Ellis’s sharp mouth beginning, too, to curve. In the crush of revelers, no one notices when Ellis’s hand goes to the small of Barrow’s back.

After the festival, they find themselves alone. The city gathers twilight around itself, and Ellis walks north without once glancing at Barrow.

Barrow’s heart is in his throat. His hand is in his pocket, stroking the figurine. He drinks in every detail: the shadow-line of Ellis’s jaw, the bruise at the stem of his hand, the rounded noise of his shoes on the cobblestones. He starts his letters with _Ellis. _He closes them with_ Cordially yours._

“You shouldn’t have come,” Ellis says, at the next corner. He still doesn’t look at Barrow.

“I’m here to see a doctor,” Barrow says, and he can’t quite clear his voice of the sting Ellis’s words inflicted. “A specialist.”

Now Ellis looks at him. Studies him, really—a long, knowing perusal. Barrow swallows and feels it all down the length of his throat.

“Well, it was foolish,” Ellis says. He swings away again, and they cross the street. “You ought to know better, Mr. Barrow.”

It takes Barrow four more street-corners to find his voice. “You didn’t seem to mind.”

“What did you tell them at Downton?”

“I’m here to see a doctor,” Barrow repeats. “A specialist.”

In the next instant they are in an alleyway, half-shrouded, and the night is so dark and complete and Ellis’s hard body so close that Barrow forgets to breathe. Ellis cups one hand around the back of Barrow’s neck and sets the other on his waist. This is what Barrow came for. This studied grace, untangled and loosed from decorum. These skilled lips on his. He shifts against the wall of the building and guides Ellis’s hand from his waist up into the pocket of his coat.

Ellis’s fingers pause on the token. Then he steps away.

“Barrow,” he says. And, softer, “Thomas.”

“Are you afraid?” Barrow asks him.

“Are you?” 

Barrow smiles a little, wryly. “I’m terrified.”

“You came anyway,” Ellis says.

Barrow takes the figurine out of his pocket and drops it into Ellis’s hand. “I couldn’t have done anything less,” he says.

There’s a place Ellis knows that is not quite safe. He orders a room, and when he and Barrow have gone up the stairs and past the housekeeper, who is staring in the opposite direction, Ellis locks the door and lights a cigarette.

“Do you want one?” he asks, and Barrow shakes his head. Instead he sits on the bed—no bigger than his own cot at the inn—and watches Ellis smoke. He is embarrassed by the knowing face of the housekeeper, and by the fact that Ellis has been here many times before. He pictures the men who came with him. Beautiful, guarded men. Men who know to be discreet.

“Thomas,” Ellis says. He ashes his cigarette. “You know what I feel for you.”

Barrow doesn’t say anything.

Ellis exhales. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“You came back to Downton, Richard,” Barrow says. He is glad his voice doesn’t shake. “That was foolish, too.”

“I believe a man is entitled to make foolish decisions in the face of something like this,” Ellis says.

“Something like what?”

Ellis puts out his cigarette. He raises an eyebrow.

Barrow looks at the slight bulge of the figurine in Ellis’s pocket. “So you’re glad?”

“I am thrilled,” Ellis says; “God, I'm so thrilled I can hardly bear it,” and Barrow bows his head with sudden cold relief. Ellis sinks down on the bed beside him. He slips Barrow’s coat from his shoulders and lets it slither to the floor.

After a while, Ellis says it again. “You know what I feel for you.”

“A great deal?” Barrow guesses.

Ellis’s mouth curves. He is a golden, lamplit specter; he is the reason Barrow finds the strength to breathe. “Far more than that,” he says.


End file.
